An electronic device having an HDMI port can act as an HDMI source and transmit multimedia data to an external device via the HDMI port. Alternatively, an electronic device having an HDMI port can act as an HDMI sink and receive multimedia data from an external device via the HDMI port.
When an electronic device has both an HDMI source function and an HDMI sink function, the electronic device usually needs to provide a dedicated HDMI port for each of the HDMI source function and the HDMI sink function. However, having two identical HDMI ports increases the component cost of the electronic device. Additionally, the electronic device needs to label these two identical HDMI ports differently in order to allow an external HDMI source and an external HDMI sink to correctly attach to their dedicated HDMI ports. As a result, the manufacturing cost of the electronic device is increased. Furthermore, certain electronic device such as a mobile phone has a limited size and/or a limited surface area, which cannot hold two separate HDMI ports.